As technology advances in the semiconductor field, devices such as processors incorporate ever-increasing amounts of circuitry. Over time, processor designs have evolved from a collection of independent integrated circuits (ICs), to a single integrated circuit, to multicore processors that include multiple processor cores within a single IC package. As time goes on, ever greater numbers of cores and related circuitry are being incorporated into processors and other semiconductors.
Multicore processors are being extended to include additional functionality by incorporation of other functional units within the processor. One issue that arises is that the different circuitry can have differing needs with regard to frequency of operation based on their workloads. However, suitable mechanisms to ensure that these different units operate at an appropriate frequency are not available. Further, the different units can have a shared interface to access a shared cache or system memory. Typically, this interface to the cache and system memory is either operated at a constant fixed frequency or is tied to the frequency of the processor cores.